Farsi Keyboard Online

Persian ی and ک vs Arabic ي and ك

The most common error in Persian text is invisible. Arabic has its own yeh (ي, U+064A) and kaf (ك, U+0643), and Persian uses different code points: ی (U+06CC) and ک (U+06A9). Text typed on an Arabic keyboard, or copied from an Arabic source, often contains the Arabic forms. Mid-word they look the same, but search and spell checking treat them as different letters. A site search for کتاب won't find كتاب.

You can tell them apart at the end of a word. Persian ی has no dots there (علی), while Arabic ي keeps two dots below. Persian ک has a plain top stroke, while Arabic ك has a small mark inside.

On this layout, the key in the D position types Persian ی, and ک is on the ; key, just right of م. Shift+D gives Arabic ي, and Shift+Z gives Arabic ك. Those two are there for quoting Arabic, so avoid them in Persian text.

نیم‌فاصله: the half-space (ZWNJ) in words like می‌خواهم

Persian separates some parts of a word without a full space. Examples are the prefix می‌ and نمی‌ (می‌خواهم, نمی‌دانم), the plural ‌ها (کتاب‌ها), and endings after silent ه (خانه‌ای). The separator is the zero-width non-joiner (ZWNJ, U+200C). It stops the letters from joining but keeps the word together.

Without it, people write میخواهم, which is joined, or می خواهم. The full space is worse, because the line can break mid-word and search sees two words.

On this page, Shift+B types the ZWNJ. With Shift held, that key is labelled "ZWNJ". For می‌خواهم, type می, press Shift+B, then type خواهم. It is invisible, but the letters on either side stop joining. On the Windows "Persian (Standard)" layout, ZWNJ is Shift+Space.

Persian digits, punctuation and other characters on this layout

The number row types Persian digits ۱۲۳۴۵۶۷۸۹۰ (U+06F0–U+06F9), as used in Iran. These are separate characters from the Arabic-Indic ٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩ used in Arab countries, and ۴, ۵ and ۶ are drawn differently. Some websites reject Persian digits in phone numbers and verification codes. For those fields, turn off physical keyboard mode and type the digits on your own keyboard.

With Shift:

• ٬ thousands separator (Shift+2) and ٫ decimal separator (Shift+3)
• ﷼ rial sign (Shift+4) and ٪ percent (Shift+5)
• ، Persian comma (Shift+7)
• ؟ question mark (Shift + the / key)

The Persian quotation marks are on Shift+L («) and Shift+K (»). آ, as in آب and آمریکا, is Shift+H. Tanvin ً, needed for words like اصلاً and واقعاً, is Shift+R. The other diacritics are on Shift along the Q row. The hamza forms أ ؤ ئ ء are on Shift+G, A, S and M, and the hamza above (ٔ), used in خانهٔ, is on Shift+N.

To install Persian on Windows, go to Settings → Time & language → Language & region → Add a language → Persian and choose the Persian (Standard) keyboard. On macOS, go to System Settings → Keyboard → Text Input → Edit → +. On Android (Gboard) and iPhone, add Persian (Farsi) in the keyboard settings. For Urdu, which needs extra letters such as ٹ and ڈ, use the Urdu keyboard.